Reader, I married him.
These are the first words of the novel’s last chapter, in which Jane, as narrator, addresses the reader directly. The next sentence reads, “A quiet wedding we had: he and I, the parson and clerk, were alone present.”
I am no bird; and no net ensnares me; I am a free human being with an independent will, which I now exert to leave you.
I would always rather be happy than dignified.
I care for myself. The more solitary, the more friendless, the more unsustained I am, the more I will respect myself.
It is a truth universally acknowledged, that a single man in possession of a good fortune must be in want of a wife.
All the privilege I claim for my own sex (it is not a very enviable one; you need not covet it), is that of loving longest, when existence or when hope is gone.
To feel for ever its soft fall and swell, / Awake for ever in a sweet unrest.